Toy Soldiers

1991

Action / Drama / Thriller

Synopsis

Billy Tepper is the leader of a group of rebellious boys at The Regis School. He has already been expelled from three prominent private schools. His best friend, Joey Trotta, is the son of the Head of the New York Mafia; Billy, all their friends and many other kids at the school have equally influential and prominent, if more law-abiding, parents. When Luis Cali's father is put in jail, he heads for the Regis School to put the son of the judge in charge of the case under hostage, only to find he has been removed. However, once he realises who the parents of the rest are, he decides the entire student body of the Regis School would be an even better bargaining chip.

Billy Tepper is the leader of a group of rebellious boys at The Regis School. He has already been expelled from three prominent private schools. His best friend, Joey Trotta, is the son of the Head of the New York Mafia; Billy, all their friends and many other kids at the school have equally influential and prominent, if more law-abiding, parents. When Luis Cali's father is put in jail, he heads for the Regis School to put the son of the judge in charge of the case under hostage, only to find he has been removed. However, once he realises who the parents of the rest are, he decides the entire student body of the Regis School would be an even better bargaining chip.

Tech specs

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by abdbraik7 / 10

Underrated

Toy soldiers is one of those movies that make you hold your breath from start to finish; the actors do their jobs very well, both the protagonists and antagonists, and the story is original and very well written and displayed. Although I cannot say it is a great film, but films do not need always to be great. Sometimes I just want to watch a movie that is enjoyable, and has a story that makes sense and toy soldiers without doubt has that. I feel sad for the team that worked in this film as they deserved more recognition for their excellent job, but I believe this is part of life not being fair. If you want to enjoy a 2 hours film filled with action and suspense scenes, then I would definitely recommend toy soldiers.

Reviewed by Stephen Bird6 / 10

Kids step up to the front line

Not necessarily a bad film, but "Toy Soldiers" comes across as reasonably underwhelming..., basically it's premise is to be a top quality action flick but drowns in its own childishness.

The cast of kids is fearful, you can see the anxiety seeping through in every character, instead of taking back the school and disposing of the terrorists, it looks as though all they want is their mommy's; fair dues they put a semi-confident effort in and eventually the terrorists do get their comeuppance, but the whole story comes across as a little flat.

Wil Wheaton is particularly terrible as the wannabe 'Rambo' Joey Trotta, the guy suffers from an inability to act, even as he aged and got older, his acting hasn't improved and sadly he's been cast aside, being labelled as another Hollywood failure.

Sean Astin fared little better, but he was in fact better, his character Billy Tepper has more about him and at least has a level of credibility, something that Wheaton's character sadly lacks..., he's clearly the 'bad-boy' of the school and seems to have grasped the idea of being cool.

The remaining cast played their roles suitably but none of them managed to put that extra something into their performance, a simple case of going through the motions and getting the job done rather than taking pride in their work and making their characters stand out; any emotional attachment to any of the characters was missing and this made emphasising with anyone an impossible task.

Something of a cult classic these days, "Toy Soldiers" isn't a particularly great film by any means, but anyone you speak to seems to have watched it so it must have indeed garnered a reputation somewhere along the line, making this an incredibly overrated film.

It smacks of 1980's, even though the film was released in 1991, giving the impression that the filmmakers hadn't moved on with the rapidly moving times.

A disappointment to the nth degree, how it's lasted this long and how it's still chugging along is a mystery, but it does and will continue to do so, obviously someone can see something in it that I can't, so fair play to them they must be brighter than I.

Reviewed by bkoganbing6 / 10

The boys from St. Rejects

It's a special boy that goes to St. Regis prep school. This one is for rich misfit kids who've been kicked out other prep schools like Groton or Exeter. But sometimes it's the rebels you need in a nasty situation.

It doesn't get nastier when a of bunch terrorists take over this prep school headed by Headmaster Denholm Elliott and Dean of Boys Lou Gossett, Jr. The head of the group is Andrew Divoff who overacts the entire film. He's son of a Columbian drug lord who is now in US custody. Divoff's original target was the son of a federal judge whom he planned to kidnap and hold for ransom exchange. But when the Feds move him and he sees that the whole school is a bunch of privileged kids, he decides to hold them all for ransom for his dad.

The hero of the hour turns out to be Sean Astin and his little crowd of special misfits. Turns out that Astin had a lot of the right stuff that no one but Gossett suspected he had.

Toy Soldiers is a nice action oriented flick aimed at the young. Divoff is an especially nasty villain whom you want very badly to see get taken down. Mason Adams as the Assistant FBI director and R. Lee Ermey as the army guy in charge are the authority figures.